Erik is a baseball fan who has been attending baseball games and snagging baseballs regularly since 2008.

7-2-10 PNC Park

Another day at PNC Park, and another crowd of Phillies fans to deal with throughout batting practice.

Luckily, PNC Park has season ticket holder early entrance, where the season ticket holders get thirty minutes of BP without the general public. That would be huge for me today, as all four of my baseballs would come during the first thirty minutes.

I was second in line behind Nick Pelescak, so I knew that I probably would be second into the bleachers, putting me at a slight disadvantage for grabbing easter eggs. However, Nick brought a curse on himself about two minutes before the gates opened by accidentally touching a cursed baseball.

The baseball in question is brought by a semi regular man who is disabled and can’t speak, but loves to play catch with a minor league baseball. I played catch with him last year and had a ridiculously awful game. The only explanation was that I had touched that baseball. I thought to myself, “That ball is cursed,” and haven’t touched it since. Whenever he gestures to toss me the ball, I make a frown and wave him off.

After watching Nick have some terrible luck on Thursday, I realized that he had played catch with Baseball Joe in line. I warned him later on that night to stay away from the cursed baseball.

Well, Nick was handed the ball by another ballhawk and immediately realized that he was again, cursed.

Two minutes later the gates opened, and for the first time ever, Nick’s ticket wouldn’t scan. Also, out of nowhere, another ticket scanner appeared and scanned my ticket, thus I bypassed Nick and was first into the bleachers. The curse of Baseball Joe. His misfortune was my luck, I found ball #1 laying in the front row.

My second ball came about two minutes later off the bat of Jose Tabata. It was a home run that would’ve landed in the first or second row. Two other ballhawks had the position and were lined up to make the catch. I was in the third row, hoping that the ball would continue to carry, but it didn’t. At the last second, both ballhawks who were positioned to make the catch had to bail on their position because they lost the ball in the ridiculously bright sun.I never lost sight of the ball, and made an outstretched basket catch, for ball #2 here:STATISTICS:Game: 4 balls (3 hit, 1 found)Season: 276 balls (149 hit, 64 thrown, 26 device, 38 found)Games: 43 gamesAverage: 6.42 balls per game2010 Game Balls: 3Career: 854 ballsStreak: 139 consecutive games attended with at least 1 ball snagged.Attendance: 30,339

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1 Comment

Erik, excellent blog. I do some ball hawking at Petco Park and Anaheim Stadium as well as quite a bit of autographing. I follow along with your blog every couple of days. You mentioned in previous entries that you were quite a fan of Evan Meek. I happen to know him well from his days in the Padre organization. I had dinner with him in Phoenix earlier this season and we also connected in Los Angeles. Please tell him that Dave in San Diego says hello. He’s the coolest dude, isn’t he?
Hopefully one of these days I’ll make the trip to Pittsburgh to check out PNC Park and enjoy the experience. I think it’s awesome that guys like you share your experiences by Blog. Gives me a great idea of what’s going on elsewhere. Keep up the good work and I will definitely like to keep contact with you.
Dave Wright
San Diego

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